Exercise professionals in the cancer center : experiences, recommendations, and future research

In 2018, the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia published a landmark position statement calling for exercise to be integrated as standard practice in cancer care. Efforts to implement this directive in the years ahead will come with many practical challenges. We suggest that for the successful integration of exercise therapy to occur, exercise professionals and their services will have to become a respected, visible, and promoted part of the cancer treatment center itself (i.e., “part of the woodwork”). However, we are aware of no report in the literature documenting the role or experiences of an exercise professional working within a cancer center, or practical recommendations for the implementation and evaluation of exercise services in this setting. Therefore, we detail the experiences of an accredited exercise physiologist, to our knowledge, one of the first to be employed on a full-time basis within a cancer center in Australia (M.M.). On the basis of this case study, we provide practical recommendations for exercise professionals seeking to integrate exercise services within the cancer treatment setting. In addition, we present a model of care involving a key role for the exercise professional, which could be implemented to improve patient care and health outcomes throughout cancer treatment and beyond. Although our article is written from an Australian perspective, our recommendations may be relevant to and/or adapted for health care systems in other countries.